Paul Watzlawick

Paul Watzlawick  was an Austrian-American family therapist, psychologist, communication theorist, and philosopher. A theoretician in communication theory and radical constructivism, he commented in the fields of family therapy and general psychotherapy. Watzlawick believed that people create their own suffering in the very act of trying to fix their emotional problems.

He was one of the most influential figures at the Mental Research Institute and lived and worked in Palo Alto, California. He was born on July 25, 1921 in Villach, Austria . After he graduated from high school in 1939 in his hometown of Villach, Austria, Watzlawick studied philosophy and philology at the Università Ca' Foscari Venice - even though the Faculty of Philosophy was not established before 1969 - and earned a PhD (doctor of philosophy degree) in 1949.